Obedience Situational explanations

Question 1

What is the agentic shift?

Answer 1

• A mental state where we fell no personal responsibility for our actions because we think we’re acting for an authority figure. Frees us from our conscious

Question 2

What is legitimacy of authority?

Answer 2

• An explanation for obedience which suggests we are more likely to obey people who we perceive have authority over us.

Question 3

Explain the autonomous state?

Answer 3

• Opposite of agentic shift is autonomous state. It means to be independent or free. It means a person in autonomous state is free to do their own actions.
• The shift from autonomous to agentic is the agentic shift.
• Milgram says this occurs when we perceive somoene else as the authority figure
• The authority figure has greater power as they are higher in the social hierarchy.

Question 4

Explain binding factors?

Answer 4

• Milgram wanted to see why his participants wanted to stop but didn’t and why they remained in agentic shift.
  This is because of binding factors.
  Allows person to ignore or minimise the damage of their behaviour and they shift responsibility to victim.

Question 5

Explain legitimacy of authority?

Answer 5

• Most societies are structured in a hierarchy way. This means certain people have authority over us. For example parents, teachers, bouncers.
  Most people accept this to allow society to run smoothly. We know this from childhood.

Question 6

Explain destructive authority?

Answer 6

• When authority becomes destructive. Shown for example, Hitler and Stalin use their power for destructive purposes.
• Also shown in Milgrams study when they used prods.

Question 7

Evaluate one strength of Milgram’s study?

Answer 7

• Milgrams own study supports agentic shift in obedience.
• Most of Milgram’s participants resisted and asked questions like “who is responsible?’ and when he said me. They carried on. As it wasn’t their responsibility.

Question 8

One limitation of Obedience Milgram?

Answer 8

• Agentic shift doesn’t explain many findings about obedience. For example Steven and Cardell. They found out 16 of 18 doctors disobeyed orders of doctor even though they was an authority figure. This hows many of the doctors were autonomous like Milgrams participants . This shows agentic shift can only account for some situations

Question 9

One strength of legitimacy of authority?

Answer 9

• Useful acount for cultural differences in obedience.
• For example only 16% of Australian woman went up to 450v. but 85% of germans went up to full volts.
• This shows that it is from how we are raised and perceive authority figures.